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Monsanto Co, said on Thursday it will restructure its herbicide products in an effort to help combat the spreading environmental woes of herbicide-resistant weeds, also known as “super weeds,” which many critics have blamed on the chemical giant. “We need to get in front of this,” Monsanto chairman Hugh Grant said in a conference call with analysts.

Higher prices for beef, pork and poultry could keep Americans from firing up their grills as often as usual this summer, keeping consumer demand for meat slow at a time of year when it usually peaks, industry experts said on Wednesday.

Global seed giant Monsanto Co took a humble tone on Wednesday, laying out a new pricing and product offering strategy following U.S. farmer complaints about the company’s practices and a disappointing launch of a new soybean seed.

Monsanto sought to reassure disheartened investors on Wednesday, saying it was gaining market share in Latin America and that farmers were enthusiastic about its new U.S. seed product lineup. The company, which has been struggling with a raft of competitive problems in both its chemicals and seeds and traits businesses, reiterated a forecast for mid-teens percentage growth in earnings per share beginning in 2011.

The real estate advisory unit of Franklin Templeton Investments plans to expand into agriculture, energy, water, and other areas that reflect rising demand for food and energy, the investment company said on Monday.

Agribusiness giant Cargill’s $6 billion Black River arm is making its next big bet on changing eating habits in major developing nations, buying into dairy farms in Asia and breeding fish in Latin America.

As economic fears spark riots in Greece and stock market sell-offs, a range of institutional and corporate interests said this week they were moving money into what they see as the relative safety of global farmland.

As seed developers around the world work to develop a genetically modified wheat, U.S. millers and bakers - formerly staunch opponents of such efforts - are offering their support, but insisting they need to be more involved before any biotech wheat is brought to market.

Many firms in Boston’s financial district invest in things you can’t touch: currency futures, index options, credit derivatives and so on. But on the 17th floor of a high-rise office tower here, more than a 1,000 miles from the nation’s Midwestern farmbelt, buttoned-down strategists at Hancock Agricultural Investment Group are wagering serious money, if not quite betting the farm, on corn, soybeans and other crops.

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, had only months to live when he received a visit from an old friend, Rob Fraley, chief of technology for Monsanto Co.